


Triple Drift

by rosewindow



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewindow/pseuds/rosewindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A triple Drift - particularly among non-relatives - was practically unheard of."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triple Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daunt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daunt/gifts).



Allison’s father changed the date on her birth certificate by two years to get her into the Ranger Program. She and her aunt were one of the first teams to help with the design of their Jaeger, a sleek killing machine called Thistle Inyo. Only Allison and the left half of the Jaeger came back from their third engagement. Afterwards, she worked as a weapons expert in the LA Shatterdome, until they found her a new co-pilot.

Scott signed up to be a Ranger with his estranged father. He’d wanted to do something, needed to help, and it had seemed like the best way. They’d been Drift Compatible, had some decent scores on the preliminary tests, but it all fell apart in the simulators. The Drift just didn’t work without trust. Scott had a talent for Drifting though, so they’d tested him with a few solo pilots and soon found a match.

\---

Allison started sleeping with Scott before they Drifted together which wasn’t often the order of things. She hadn’t even realized he was one of the co-pilot candidates until he’d been facing off against her in the kwoon with a small smile. He licked his lips and she recalled vividly exactly what his tongue been doing the night before. This was going to be fun.

The fight was more like dancing, or having sex. They moved neatly and gracefully around each other, seeming to anticipate the other’s movement. Scott’s style flowed much more than Kate’s had, and it allowed him to adjust to her sharper moves. In turn, she found herself loosening up, turning what would have been quick jabs into longer passes that reached their target more often.

He was sweating more and more as the fight dragged on, and his motions were slowing down a bit, but his smile got bigger and bigger. He pinned her to the mat and huffed a laugh as if he’d won, and Allison used the moment of distraction to flip him over and brace her stick against his throat.

“This feels familiar,” he smirked.

“Ranger Argent, Cadet McCall, well done.”

They both rose at the sound of Marshall Hale.

“I think I’ve seen what I need,” she said. “Ranger Argent, would you like to pilot with Cadet McCall?”

“I’d love to pilot with _Ranger_ McCall,” Allison said, smiling.

Laura nodded and whispered something to her brother and right-hand man who jotted down a note on his tablet. “Very good. Report to Drift Tech after lunch to start your first Sim Run. Congratulations, Rangers.”

\---

Stiles hadn’t planned to be a Ranger. He’d been working with the Pons technology and had tried to run a Simulator on his own. Luckily, a passing Cadet had heard the warning beeps and patched in before Stiles completely broke his brain. Their score was one of the highest the Academy had ever seen for non-relatives, and Stiles had been transferred to Ranger Academy almost immediately to begin training with his new co-pilots.

\---  
A triple Drift - particularly among non-relatives - was practically unheard of. They probably wouldn’t have gotten permission if Stiles hadn’t been one of the Drift technicians. And they definitely wouldn’t have gotten a second chance if the Argent name didn’t carry so much weight.

Their first attempt was frankly disastrous; Allison was just glad they weren’t in a Jaeger at the time. Allison figured she had the most trauma to bring into the Drift, but she also had the most training and experience, and Scott had been in her head before. Scott had been in both of their heads, and a lot of the pressure was on him to create a link between the other two Drift partners.

It started out alright. They dropped into the Drift without incident, and Allison could tell it was a strong neural handshake even before LOCCENT announced it. She skipped through Scott’s brain, touching lightly on his new memories, particularly those of his emergency Drift with Stiles. Then she opened her mind up to Stiles. His head was a bright, overwhelming jumble at first, but there was a logic to it she realized as she sunk deeper. Related memories branched off from major ones. Allison caught a glimpse of a young boy playing Tee Ball, then the boy slightly older on a camping trip with his parents, then the boy hunched over in a hospital waiting room. She felt Stiles grab at the memory, and Scott snapped something about chasing the RABIT, but that’s not what Stiles was doing. He was trying - futilely - to shield the memory from them, to keep them from seeing.

“Don’t do that!” she yelped. “You’ll knock us out of-”

But it was too late. Alarms started sounding and the simulation fell apart around them.

LOCCENT was yelling in her headset, but Allison was more concerned about the collapsed pilot in front of her. Stiles was hanging loose in the harness, unconscious or stunned, and Scott was fumbling with his suit, trying to get to his side. Allison got there first, and got Stiles unhooked and spread out on the floor of the Conn Pod.

He was conscious and breathing, but looked totally out of it. Allison pulled his helmet off carefully, and checked his pulse. She felt Scott moving towards them before she could see him, still a little caught up in the Drift. He knelt down and put a hand on Stiles’s cheek.

“I told you, man,” Scott whispered, tears in his eyes. “You’ve gotta let us in. You’ve gotta trust us.”

\---

Alan lost his best friend on K-Day. His training was as a vet, so he’d gone into K-Science and Kaiju Detection initially, but when the Jaeger Program went public, he switched gears. Having Dr. Lightcap compliment him on his development work for the LOCCENT systems was one of the proudest moments of his life. The Drift was fascinating - the potential available to two people when they worked together as one, and the possibilities just expanded with three.

\---

There was a lot riding on this Sim Run. After the disaster of the first one, if this one fell apart there would be hell to pay. And by “hell” Alan of course meant “Laura Hale.” She and her brother were pacing the Command Center, and he was trying as best he could to ignore them.

“Alright guys, ease into it. Your Drift was strong last time, just don’t get lost,” he said into the microphone.

He saw the three of them nod. Scott looked serious, but composed. Alan wasn’t really worried about him. He’d worked with Scott on a lot of his test Drifts back when they were trying to find him someone to pilot with, and he knew the kid could handle almost anything and still keep his head clear and in the moment. Allison looked twitchier than he would have expected a seasoned pilot to be, but considering that she’d gotten most of the kickback from Stiles’s attempt at shielding maybe it wasn’t that odd. And Stiles, Stiles looked terrified. This was only his third Drift after all, and his Ranger training had been more of a crash course.

“Initiating Neural Handshake,” said the computer.

This was it.

Stiles forced himself to remain calm as the Drift kicked in. He felt Allison and Scott take up places in his head, an intrusion only slightly lessened by the fact that he was doing the same to them. There was a flash of images: Scott skinning his knees on the playground, Allison at a dance recital, the last big fight after the Drift with Scott’s father failed, claws tearing half a Jaeger and half a mind away. Stiles gasped, but the Drift held.

The three of them paused for a long moment, testing the Drift before they started to move. On the simulator screen, their Jaeger’s arms lifted into a fighting stance.

“Try moving around a bit,” said Deaton into their headpieces.

Scott and Stiles were in charge of the body of the Jaeger, while Allison handled weapons. The bond with Stiles was strong, Scott could feel it humming through him as they stalked through the empty city streets.

“You guys ready for a Kaiju?” asked Deaton.

“Bring it on,” Scott said with a grin, feeling Stiles and Allison’s enthusiasm in his head.

They heard a screech in the distance, and the sound of claws tearing through pavement and buildings. The Kaiju surged around a skyscraper and launched at them. The Jaeger charged forward, all three of them moving in unison, identical smiles on their faces.

\---

Lydia designed Jaegers. She had a notebook full of blueprints in her designer handbag, and the mechanics were in awe of how she navigated the Shatterdome floors in four inch heels. She’d worked with Hermann Gottlieb for a brief period of time, before she designed Vega Banshee and was swallowed up by Jaeger Tech. She liked it more than K-Science anyway; she had more control over her projects and didn’t risk getting Kaiju guts on her clothes.

\---

“You need _what_?”

“A Jaeger with three arms.”

“I heard you the first time, Allison. It can’t be done practically.”

Allison smirked and dropped a photocopied blueprint on her friend’s desk. “Crimson Typhoon; the Wei triplets. Still under construction, but theoretically possible. And if someone else can do it, you definitely can.”

Lydia tapped a pen against the plans. “For the three of you?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, leaning forward eagerly.

Her gaze swept over them: Scott was excited, Stiles seemed awestruck, and Allison looked smug.

“I’ll need to watch you fight. To the kwoon. Now.”

She toed her heels off at the edge of the kwoon, and was suddenly significantly shorter than all three of them.

“Are you joining us?”

“The kwoon director broke into my bunk and stole all my shoes the last time I wore them on his mats. Revenge was sweet, but I don’t want to deal with that again. Have at it, don’t mind me.”

That was easier said than done. Lydia darted in and out of their fight, taking notes, making sketches, even measuring things at one point. It was a good thing they’d opted not to use the sticks. Finally she ducked out to start a basic sketch, but when they tried to stop the match she glared at them.

Stiles rolled his eyes and rolled back into the fight. His connection was still rougher with Allison, they hadn’t quite found their balance yet, so Scott stepped up his own game. He went after both of them with a fury, and was gratified when they instantly snapped together to counter his assault. At the very edge of conscious awareness, he could feel their minds brushing together. He grinned and reached out too. It was a bit like reaching for someone’s hand, except not at all like that really. He felt it when it worked though; they all did.

Drifting wasn’t exactly a psychic connection. There was all sorts of science behind it that Stiles mostly understood, but there were also aspects that wasn’t quantifiable. There were enough reports of Drift Hangover and Ghost Drifting and unmanned Jaegers moving, that Stiles was willing to suspend a little disbelief. This feeling went beyond that. At first, it was like he knew where his opponents were going to be, so moved there, but they also knew where he was going to move, and countered. As he got used to it, it became more of a stream of information - received, processed, and reacted to faster than he could follow.

For Allison it felt like breathing again after being underwater for too long. She and Scott were very well matched, but she had thought nothing could replace the bond she’d had with Kate. This rush, with two brains flitting along the edges of hers, was more than anything she’d felt before. She itched to be in a Drivesuit again, strapped into a Jaeger of her own. The others fed off her rising excitement, and the speed of the sparring match increased. She was ducking punches from Scott and making jabs at Stiles in the same motion, and she’d never felt more alive.

Lydia took a few more notes and then snapped her notebook shut. “Thanks ladies. I’ve got what I need.”

She scooped up her heels, and headed back to her office to begin drafting.

\---

Derek did the press conferences for the Shatterdome. Laura insisted that he was the best at making her excuses and glaring at reporters until they went away. He was, but it wasn’t what he’d wanted to do. Lots of people had had other plans before K-Day. His had never been concrete, but it had included family. Now there was just him and Laura, and Cora who had fucked off to Eastern Canada, and - always - the Jaegers.

\---

Jaegers weren’t alive, not really. The closest they came was when they were being piloted, but even then, they were still at their core just billion dollar hunks of metal, circuitry, and nuclear reactors. Mechanics talked about Jaegers moving unmanned, responding to signals sent by their sleeping pilots. Derek had never heard of one moving before it was finished.

The plans for Cerberus Vector were posted by the bay where construction on the frame was finished, and the mech was starting to get fleshed out. Derek inspected them carefully, even though they were all Greek to him. Actually, he thought parts of this were really in Greek. One of the chief mechanics approached warily, with an updated set of plans in his arms that he tacked up over the older ones. Derek realized that there were several layers of plans for most of the schematics, added on as Dr. Martin came up with new ideas or adjustments.

“Mr. Lahey,” Derek snapped, just before the mechanic slunk away. “I’m here about the report your men filed.”

“Oh. Um, that’s probably nothing, sir. We’ve been working long shifts, and everyone gets a bit tired. It’s a big place; there are often strange noises, lights that you can’t find the source of. It’s all just overactive imaginations.”

Derek just glared.

The man kept talking. “I mean, we don’t even have the circuits _connected_ to anything yet. They’re just loose up there in the Conn Pod frame. And no one’s Drifted with her yet, so there’s no chance of any of that pilot, superstitious bullshit-”

“Where can I find the pilots?” Derek interrupted.

Lahey pointed behind Derek, and then vanished.

“How’s my baby coming along?” said one of the approaching men brightly.

Derek knew all three of them from their personnel files, but he could have guessed who they were by their clothes too: First Name Redacted Stilinski, still wearing the technician coat from his days in the Pons department; Scott McCall, understated but strong looking in his PPDC jumpsuit; and Allison Argent, in her Thistle Inyo bomber jacket complete with marks for three Kaiju kills.

“Apparently she’s kicking,” Derek deadpanned.

“What, really?” Allison asked in surprise. “Wow.”

“It’s a matter of some concern,” Derek started, but they weren’t listening to him anymore.

They crossed the few meters between them and one of Vector’s enormous feet, and Scott laid a hand on her reverently. Far above them, something clanged in the chest cavity, and Derek felt a chill run down his spine. The three pilots bent their heads together and were talking in low voices. As Derek watched, Allison reached a hand around to scratch her shoulder, but Stiles’s hand was already there. Then Stiles fumbled the pen he was fiddling with and Scott caught it without looking. Derek was struck by an odd feeling of both regret and relief that he’d never Drifted with anyone.

\---

Cerberus Vector was launched in February 2019 to much fanfare. She was one of the earliest Mark-Vs, and unusual in her three-armed construction. Before the primary test run, her three pilots were balls of nerves as only one of them had ever piloted a real Jaeger before. During the run, it was like nothing else, every part of the four of them working in unison. And after the test, there was a different sort of union going on.

**Author's Note:**

> Stop by and say hello on tumblr! (rosewindow.tumblr.com)


End file.
